| Published on 23-08-2007 In National |
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| CPI-M: A party that loves both Stalin and democracy |
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Written by
M.R. Narayan Swamy |
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), which is at the heart of a political crisis that threatens the government, is one of the world's largest communist parties which swears by parliamentary democracy while still idolising Stalin.
In a country of over 1.1 billion people, the CPI-M's certified membership is less than a million. The number stood at 945,486 in 2006 - a year after Prakash Karat replaced the ageing Harkishan Singh Surjeet as general secretary, making a generational change in the leadership of the well-knit party.
But members of its affiliated organisations runs into millions, with the farmers' front enjoying 2.8 million members and the youth front over a million.
The Left grouping led by the CPI-M has 61 valuable MPs in the Lok Sabha who provide the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) the crucial majority in parliament. The CPI-M itself holds 43 MPs.
The CPI-M sets the agenda for its smaller allies: Communist Party of India (CPI), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Forward Bloc. Objections from the four-party grouping have put the India-US civil nuclear deal in jeopardy.
Born after the then pro-Moscow CPI split in 1964, the CPI-M suffered serious early blows when a radical section walked away just three years later, leading to the formation of the pro-China Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist or CPI-ML.
With Moscow backing the CPI and Beijing supporting the CPI-ML, the CPI-M was left friendless globally. The only communist parties ready to forge "fraternal ties" with the CPI-M for a long time were those of Vietnam, Romania and Cuba.
In 1964, when it took birth, the CPI-M had 118,683 members. Today only two of the first nine members of the party's Politburo are alive: a still active Jyoti Basu and a sickly Surjeet.
During the late 1960s, the CPI-M was a junior member of two short-lived coalition governments in West Bengal. It was during those turbulent times that the CPI-M introduced the concept of 'gherao' - whereby agitators would simply surround an official denying him food and water until their demands were met.
Hundreds of CPI-M cadres were jailed across the country with members of other opposition parties when prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency rule in 1975-77.
The post-Emergency situation saw the CPI-M take power in West Bengal in June 1977 and unleashing sweeping land reforms. Since then the CPI-M has grown from strength to strength, winning every assembly election in the state.
And although it has been in and out of power in Tripura and Kerala too, it is its envious success in West Bengal that has given it the aura it commands today nationally - and with communist parties around the world.
Besides these three states, the CPI-M is strong in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. But everywhere else its influence is poor or weak, and its repeated bid to expand in the populous Hindi-speaking belt has failed. Today it has virtually no leadership in three states: Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Unlike the CPI, the CPI-M has refused to join any government unless it can influence its policies.
It is this stand that made the party's Central Committee veto Jyoti Basu's desire to become prime minister at the head of a centre-left government in 1996 - not once but twice. Leading the charge then too was Karat.
Although the Politburo runs the party on a day-to-day basis, it is the numerically stronger Central Committee that is the highest decision-making body. The CPI-M holds a Party Congress every three years.
At present the party has 19 State Committees and seven State Organising Committees. Below the state-level committees are district, zonal, area and local committees. The branch is the primary unit of the party.
Unlike most communist parties around the world that were shaken up after the Soviet Union collapsed, the CPI-M has refused to compromise ideologically.
It still firmly believes in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" - a concept the CPI dropped long ago. Party documents say the CPI-M has sought to apply "Marxism Leninism to Indian conditions".
Stalin remains a key member of the communist pantheon it reveres.
The CPI-M brings out two central organs: "People's Democracy" in English and "Lok Lehar" in Hindi. It also has a theoretical quarterly, "The Marxist".
The party publishes five daily newspapers: Ganashakti (Bengali), Desabhimani (Malayalam), Prajashakti (Telugu), Theekathir (Tamil) and Desher Katha (also Bengali but published from Tripura).
It also publishes several weeklies and fortnightlies in Assamese, Oriya, Bengali, Malayalam, Punjabi, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu. In 1992 it set up a news agency: India News Network.
The CPI-M also runs a publishing wing that produce leftwing literature. |
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